Some embodiments described herein relate generally to radio spectral scanning, and, in particular, to methods and apparatus for performing intelligent spectral scanning of wireless access points.
Some known spectral scanning schemes can be operated at wireless access points to gather useful spectral information, which can be used to classify interferences in the vicinity of the radio of the wireless access points. Such a spectral scanning scheme is typically operated with a set of fixed parameters including a fixed scanning frequency. Operations of this spectral scanning scheme, however, can significantly degrade performance of the wireless service if the scanning frequency is too high. In general, the higher the spectral scanning frequency, the worse the performance of the wireless service. On the other hand, if the scanning frequency is too low, the scanning resolution may not be high enough for the classifier to identify interferences accurately. As a result, the classifier either misclassifies or cannot classify the interference at all.
Some known access points can implement a configurable but fixed spectral scanning scheme, which offers a spectral-first or a data-first configuration option to allocate the radio resource between spectral scanning and wireless service. Such a spectral scanning scheme, however, can easily generate unpredictable or unacceptable results because the configuration selection is binary and it basically favors either spectral scanning or wireless service when the corresponding configuration option is selected and spectral scanning and wireless service are competing for the radio resource. Thus, the non-selected option will not be fully utilized and will be compromised.
Accordingly, a need exists for intelligent spectral scanning methods and apparatus that can meet different operation goals under different circumstances. Particularly, a need exists for intelligent spectral scanning methods and apparatus that satisfy the spectral scanning requirement while maintaining the quality of the wireless service.